Posted on 11/15/2012 7:41:40 AM PST by Kaslin
Democrats have been blaming George W. Bush for the last four years.
Now I think it's time for Republicans to start blaming George W. for the next four years.
For a week we've been pinning last week's debacle on everything from Mitt Romney's moderation to low Republican turnout.
But the most important Republican who didn't turn out to support Romney this fall was George W. Bush.
You can make an honest argument that G.W. was as much to blame as anyone else for our being unable to defeat an incompetent incumbent of historic proportions.
For four years Barack Obama has blamed the Great Recession on G.W. and used his presidency as his excuse for why the economy is taking so long to get fixed.
And where's G.W. been? MIA or AWOL, take your pick.
He didn't show up at the GOP convention. He didn't become an enthusiastic surrogate for Romney in a handful of swing states where a few hundred thousand more Republican voters could have changed history. He didn't stump for senatorial candidates in contested states such as Virginia and Montana.
G.W., the ex-cheerleader, was nowhere to be seen or heard during Romney's campaign. What's worse, he didn't even defend his own economic record. He let the conservatives on talk radio and at Fox News do it.
The trouble is talk radio and Fox only reach about 20 million people during a week - and most of them are already in the conservative Republican choir.
Last I checked, 121 million Americans voted on Election Day. That left us Republicans with 101 million people who still needed to hear our message about who's really to blame for the broken economy of 2008 to 2012.
We griped and moaned and pointed to Obama, but the mainstream liberal media were too busy protecting their hero to fairly tell our side of the story.
The only way conservatives can get the national news media to deliver our message to the American people is to go over the media's heads. And the only people who can do that consistently are ex-presidents of the USA.
Bill Clinton became Obama's best propaganda weapon. When Clinton claimed that no one, not even a super-genius like him, could have solved the economic problem G.W. Bush left Obama within four years, every voter in America heard it.
Even Jimmy Carter was hauled out of mothballs to help the Democrat cause.
The 2012 campaign was all about "the economy, stupid." Obama blamed G.W. and Republicans. Plus, he had Clinton and Carter bashing G.W.'s record with their bully sticks every day and countering Romney's arguments that Obama was to blame.
We should have had G.W. standing up and saying, "This is bull. I'm tired of this. This is what I did or did not do with the economy as president. The real culprits are Dodd & Frank and four years of Obama's failed policies."
Instead G.W. stayed quiet, even on the issue of Benghazi. Because he refused to show up and defend himself and his record, the Republican Party had to take arrows for him and we lost our second presidential election in a row.
The question I'd like to ask my fellow conservative Republicans is, if G.W. isn't willing to stand up for his own presidency, why the heck should we?
I don’t blame GW one bit, he doesn’t owe anyone anything, most of all the GOP that didn’t have his back when he needed it the most.
GOP didnt like Bush..I am guessing they told him butt out as did McPain in the last election. the party didnt really support him anyway.
Family of Secrets
Romney, and the GOP-e, campaigned as moderates and that turned-off a large number of the conservative/TEA Party base.
Almost certainly not GW's choice. He was so successfully demonized by the D's that it was probably decided by the Republican establishment the his involvement would be a negative.
GW saw the writing on the wall after the 2004 election. He was going to ‘spend his capital’ on entitlement reform. It was an idea whose time had come, but they left him at the alter. Then came the 2006, Nancy and Harry debacle. The rest as they say is history. He owes no one anything.
>>He was so successfully demonized by the D’s
I agree wholeheartedly.
0bama ran against Bush in ‘08 and again in ‘12. Anything Bush did would have added fuel to that fire.
Damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t.
I have plenty of disagreements with Bush, but this is most definitely not one of them.
> The trouble is talk radio and Fox only reach about 20 million people during a week - and most of them are already in the conservative Republican choir.
True. Please grasp this.
> Last I checked, 121 million Americans voted on Election Day. That left us Republicans with 101 million people who still needed to hear our message about who’s really to blame for the broken economy of 2008 to 2012.
Rush and Fox and conservative media provide only a small fraction of the worldview Middle America receives passively from hourly radio newscasts providing network and AP feeds, the thousands of local newspapers providing AP feeds, the hundreds of local TV stations providing network feeds, Yahoo internet news providing AP feeds, and the various other sources of Progressive worldview beaming liberalism to passive Middle America.
Take down the several wire services and we take down the Progressive movement.
Michael Reagan is off base on this one. Blaming Bush for Romney’s loss is absolutely unhelpful.
Reagan is right that conservative media reaches about 20 million and regular media much more, but that’s not Bush’s fault. To his credit, he won despite that.
Romney lost because Romney disengaged and because Romney spent his attack money poorly and because Romney used the media poorly.
That said, with a five to one advantage in reaching people, republicans are going to be in the wasteland for years if they don’t find a way to overcome that.
Damned if you do... damned if you don’t. Not fair to W.
Michael Reagan is lashing out in blind rage.
But the author makes an excellent point. While president Bush allowed the leftists to overwhelmingly fill the vacuum by NEVER responding to the increasingly shrill and absurd caterwauling. This clearly damaged Bush, Conservatives, and the Republican brand. Silence equaled acceptance of the left’s false narrative.
Fast forward. Bush has some residual responsibility to the GOP and Conservatives to not allow the leftists to continue to fill the vacuum with ongoing lies about his (our) record. Bush ongoing silence is a measure of disrespect for all of us who fought for him and defended him, and he continue to refuse to defend himself, and by extension, us!
>>Take down the several wire services and we take down the Progressive movement.
Amen to that.
Much has been said about “low information voters.” The bigger problem is “misinformation and disinformation voters.”
*** Take down the MSM. ***
“It’s the candidate, stupid!”
Exactly. They, and the Romney campaign, probably told him to stay home, just like they told Palin to stay home. Can’t blame them now.
What a crock! Do you really think if Bush was asked to support somebody, that he would have declined? If he was not visibly supporting somebody, that most likely is because they did not want his support. Their loss, not his problem.
I don’t blame Bush either. Crimony sakes, he was probably counseled - as Sarah Palin most likely was - to stay out of this because he was ‘toxic.’ If I remember correctly, the left demonized him - in preparation for O’s campaign - and many Republicans turned on him as well.
With friends like that ....
What I admired about him, then, and do to this day - he was a man who had a deep inner core of solid values. Did I always agree with him? No, but I loved having a man of integrity in the WH. So rare.
I think Michael Reagan is wrong on this one. Blame Bush, AGAIN? Gets so old.
Please.
Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) create policy and long-term strategy, not politicians.
GWB did their bidding while in the WH, though, like many, the extent to which the U.S. government does the bidding of NGOs may actually escape him. He may well not think of himself as a virtual employee of elitists.
The only difference between Obama and GWB is that Obama’s NGO backers are aligned with the New Left, which GWB’s would be more aligned to generic academic and financial. However, the NGO universe is such a heaping, steaming, incestuous pile of pooh that is is no doubt hard to tell who is actually coming up with what ideas.
Every time a President gets information from an “expert”, if that person has a college degree they are most certainly receiving outlooks that are in line with NGO strategies.
Politicians, all their staffs, consultants, etc., are merely the point where the cast of characters in political theatre intersects with NGOs representing “interests”, whether they be sovereign wealth funds, breast cancer research scams, jealous communist hacks, etc.
Catch my next NGO post...
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